Tuesday, January 13, 2009

My wife asked this exact same question just the other day, "How does RadioShack stay in business?"

I've long wondered the same thing, though, with me, the question is usually dismissed rather quickly since there is a special place in my heart for these stores going all the way back to the early-80s when, as an Electrical Engineering student, many purchases were made there for lab projects (e.g., octal buffers, dual flip-flops, breadboards, wire strippers, and tons of wire).

Others say that RadioShack is just a giant money laundering business like the sanitation company that Tony Soprano used to run in New Jersey prior to the HBO hit ending its long run a couple years ago.

The folks at The Onion have now added to the intrigue with this report:

Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In BusinessDespite having been on the job for nine months, RadioShack CEO Julian Day said Monday that he still has "no idea" how the home electronics store manages to stay open.

"There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," Day said. "You wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn't have this desk to sit behind all day."

The retail outlet boasts more than 6,000 locations in the United States, and is known best for its wall-sized displays of obscure-looking analog electronics components and its notoriously desperate, high-pressure sales staff. Nevertheless, it ranks as a Fortune 500 company, with gross revenues of over $4.5 billion and fiscal quarter earnings averaging tens of millions of dollars.

"Have you even been inside of a RadioShack recently?" Day asked. "Just walking into the place makes you feel vaguely depressed and alienated. Maybe our customers are at the mall anyway and don't feel like driving to Best Buy? I suppose that's possible, but still, it's just...weird."

A RadioShack store that somehow manages to bring in enough paying customers to turn a profit.

After taking over as CEO, Day ordered a comprehensive, top-down review of RadioShack's administrative operations, inventory and purchasing, suppliers, demographics, and marketing strategies. He has also diligently pored over weekly budget reports, met with investors, taken numerous conference calls with regional managers about "circulars or flyers or something," and even spent hours playing with the company's "baffling" 200-In-One electronics kit. Yet so far none of these things have helped Day understand the moribund company's apparent allure.

Some CEO. Anyway, I've spentmore money at RatShack in the past 5 years than Best Buy.Hey, it's not cool to be a do it yourself electronics nut, but maybe there are more of us around than you think. Where else can you buy a capacitor or cable that you happen to need without waiting to have it shipped or driving to the nearest mega-strip.

The Onion is a fairly amusing site, but the article itself outside of that reflects exactly what I've questioned for many years. I've only been in their stores less than a dozen times in my entire life, an average of onceevery 4 years statistically. I know a local RS that closed that was a very small outlet. I can't help but wonder if there's something to the theory that it's a front for money laundering. Every time I ever visited it was rare that there were any other customers in the store(s), and it did make me feel edgy...the salesguy (NEVER female) would practically be up your ass if you'd let him until you got what you needed, paid, and vacated the premises. I did and still do like knowing where to find that obscure item that's impossible to find in other brick 'n mortar retails.

I went in there a year or two ago looking fora miniature FM radio for my boyfriend. The salesperson said they didn't have anything like that -- only MP3 players. "But you're RADIO shack" I replied. And then the kid just shrugged.

I think this post spurred another one of those dreams last night where I thought I was still in school and had a test in the morning (for which I hadn't studied), a paper due on Friday (which I hadn't started), and a project due next week (which I hadn't even thought about starting).

It ended the way they usually do where I wake up and think, "Thank God I'm not still in school" ala Val Kilmer in Top Secret.

Superfunny Onion article that pretty much summarizes the questions I've had for a long time. Fact is, Radio Shack blows (or sucks, guess you'd have to get the 200 in one electronics kit to figure it out).

Yes, you CAN get electronic knick-knacks but you can't get the pattiwacks. Or, should I say, they USED to carry every little electronic doo-dad under the sun but even THAT area which they held a seeming monopoly on, is vaporizing as they allot more floor space to stuff you can get pretty much anywhere else at a much better price. Even their educational kits are stuff you could pick up at a hobby lobby for much cheaper.

But what's worse is stepping inside such a loser store makes me feel like a loser. Kind of like Walmart. Walmart's cheapness makes me feel cheap. Radio Shack's desperate sales staff make me feel desperate. Heaven help anyone who might walk into the store should Walmart and Radio Shack merge: desperate, cheap and inexplicably still in business.